Switching between subjective and objective modes is the essence of the scientific modus operandi. Not many people seem to appreciate that. Science is all about riding two horses, maybe not in concert, but certainly alternately - and knowing when to switch from one to the other.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Here's what I added as the opinionated equivalent of a news flash, tacked onto the tail end of the previous posting (unashamed marketing of my absurdly simple, some might say simplistic, white flour/hot iron model for the 'enigmatic' image on that Turin Shroud).

Yes, we know that airborne powders can produce fireballs and/or explosions. As a student (1963) I used to work a night shift during the summer vacation at Quaker Oats (puffed wheat gunner!). I'm pretty sure I saw a brief powder fireball one night on a deserted upper floor with storage bins, though I told no one, for fear I'd be laughed at.

But something has to disperse the dust first. What dispersed that coloured powder in the Taipei water park? ? Was it a propellant, as in aerosol spray cans? Might it have been liquified butane gas (boiling point -1 degrees C)?

Here's what I wrote yesterday. So far, there's no reason to change a single word, while we await the outcome of the official investigation.

So far we've been told next to nothing about the chemistry, except that a "coloured powder ignited".

If
one looks at the video clip that accompanies the BBC report (see link)
one sees a cloud of white vapour coming from the stage immediately
before the conflagration. At a normal gig that would be the fog produced
when dry ice (solid CO2) is dropped into water.

Dry ice and water - NOT the effect used at the Taiwan water park.

But CO2 extinguishes fire. Might it have been
liquified propane (BPt. -42 degrees C) or more probably butane (Bpt -1 degrees C) instead, the latter as used in aerosol spray cans etc? In other
words, it wasn't the coloured solid, whatever that was, that was the
culprit, but a flammable gaseous propellant. Propane gas (C3H8) has
about 1.5 times the density of air, butane (C4H10) more than double, so
would tend briefly to hug the ground before dispersal via diffusion. We shall see. Burns are terrible things. My sympathies to all the victims and their loved ones.

Late update (July 9) on the MIXED chemical composition of propellant liquified gases: have come across this on the BOC site:

All the mixes, from those with lowest to highest ejection pressure, are a mixture of 3 gases. propane (3 carbon), n-butane (4 carbon, straight chain) and isobutane (4 carbon, branched chain, BPt -11.7 degrees C, i.e. significantly lower than n-butane with correspondingly greater vapour pressure). In short, liquified butane is insufficiently volatile, liquid propane is too volatile. A mix of the two butanes with propane is chosen that gives the desired vapour pressure and propellant force.

Further late insertion (July 10): here's a freeze frame from a YouTube video of the disaster, showing a gas cylinder on the stage, used to eject powder.

Gas cylinder, left of centre.

That downward sloping delivery nozzle is suggestive of a cylinder that delivers a liquified gas as a cloud of fine vapour or adiabatically-supercooled solid particles. It's reminiscent of CO2 fire extinguishers as used in my own country (UK), except the latter are red. and have a large hollow black horn instead of a short nozzle.

If one is to look at the causes of that deadly conflagration objectively. one cannot focus exclusively on the solid powder, despite its potential fire hazard when finely dispersed in air. One must also look at the means used to propel it into the crowd. Was it really liquified CO2 that was used as propellant as stated in a minority of reports? Or was there a tragic mix up, i.e. inadvertent substitution of a highly flammable butane/propane propellant? What is the colour-coding of gas or fire extinguisher cylinders in Taiwan?

Update on that BBC report: 14:25 French time"The fire department said the powder ,used to create a party
atmosphere, may have ignited due to the heat of the lights on the stage,
or from sparks from machinery. The substance is also used in
other countries. It is made of dried corn and can be highly flammable,
says the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei.The 519 victims were sent to 41 hospitals, and 413 are still in hospital, say municipal authorities."

Flammable
solid maybe, but it still needed a propellant gas to shower it over the
crowd. I still suspect itr was the propellant gas that ignited first.

Update 16:40

Here's a freeze-frame from the video clip that accompanied the Telegraph's report:

Video still: Taiwan water park, immediately prior to fireball

A instant later, the white cloud of vapour (butane?) was replaced by an orange fireball.

Here's a particular (hair-raising) section, meaning not entirely clear due to missing words and/or punctuation, that may or may not be relevant to what happened in that water park. Note the reference to propane and kerosene:

An obsolete method for creating theatrical fog on-stage (although the
technique is still commonly used in motion pictures) is to use a device
known as a thermal fogger, initially designed for distributing pesticide, which aspirates a petroleum product (typically kerosene or propane)
ignites the fuel, and then mixes in air and pesticide to create a dense
fog. For theatrical purposes the pesticide is typically replaced with
glycol, glycol/water mixtures, or water. This technique is similar to
the smoke generators used by militaries to create smoke screens, and is generally only used outdoors due to the volume of fog produced and the petroleum fuel required.

Investigators raised the question of whether the powder was ignited by a
cigarette or spark; the supplier of the flammable, starch-based powder
said "if it's in dense quantities and if it's hot, it can catch fire".
Organizers had purchased three tons of the powder, and wrote on their
Facebook page that it consisted of cornstarch and food coloring. The
powder was sprayed from the stage onto concert-goers "at high velocity".[23]

The accompanying text says that high-pressure CO2 was used to propel the powder into the crowd, and that ignition had occurred at the nozzle delivering gas. That makes no sense whatsoever. As mentioned earlier, CO2 is used to extinguish fire. What seems more likely is a mix-up of cylinders, with butane or maybe propane having been used in place of CO2.

Update: 1st July 2015: Changing the subject: I have just added this comment to an Allison Pearson article on the Telegraph. (This blogger has been ridiculing the national obsession with demonising the so-called motorway middle-lane hoggers for more years than he cares to remember).

Lorries involved in rising percentage of fatal crashes
22 October 2013Lorries
are involved in a increasing percentage of fatal traffic accidents on
Britain's roads. New analysis has shown that last year HGVs were
implicated in more than half of fatal motorway accidents and one-in-five
fatal accidents on A-roads, continuing negative trends over the last
five years.

Yes, the Highway Code simply refuses to take on
board the reality of mixing convoys of HGVs with private motorists, many
with their precious family members on board.
The Highway Code is an
anachronism where motorways are concerned. It's a poor reflection on our
police and motoring organizations that they continue to demonize the 65
-70 mph middle lane 'hogger,' essentially legitimizing the 70+ mph
middle lane hogger, specifically the sort who resorts to intimidation
and tailgating as soon as he encounters someone going slightly slower
than himself, and refusing to use the third lane to overtake.

PS Here's a link to an item that appeared on the BBC's site some 2 years ago.

It
starts with an AA spokesman being quoted about research that shows that
middle lane hogging is bad because it allegedly reduces motorway
capacity (not a word about safety). And who did the research? Answer:
the RAC Foundation we are told. Later in the article we have an academic
being highly dismissive of the RAC's conclusion that hogging cuts
capacity by a third. Regardless, since when has it been the job of
motoring organizations to do traffic flow modelling - a highly complex
business - especially if one tries to factor in driver psychology
influenced as often as not by survival instinct. What gives the lie to
RAC research is the observation that when motorways are fully occupied
most of the time, as is the case with certain stretches of the M25, one
finds very little lane switching at all, effectively 3 lane "hogging"
(see that BBC link).

I tried to find some quality research on the
pros and cons of middle lane hogging. The old Road Research Laboratory,
now privatized, calls itself the Transport Research Laboratory, but
nothing came back when I searched its website under a range of
keywords.One suspects there is NO quality research on the topic.
Personally
I think the AA and RAC should butt out of things that are beyond their
brief and/or competence. Why should they be concerned anyway with
motorways being used to their full capacity? They are dangerous enough
as it is, used at half capacity, when private motorists are forced to
mix it with lane-switching HGVs in Lanes 1 and 2. Would they not be
better occupied pressing for more roads, dual carriageways as well as
motorways, or even designating new roads for HGV or non-HGV use only?

Update: Friday July 10: back to Taiwan: even allowing for cultural differences, it seems strange to this Westerner that there is so little by way of analysis, enquiry, speculation, human interest follow-upon the Taiwan disaster. Had that mishap occured in Europe or the US there would have been intense interest (bordering on fury) that something like that could have happened, killing 3 people already, and inflicting 'life-changing injuries' on scores more with those 50%+ burns. Something's not right, and maybe it's to do with those ' cultural differences'. Like the fact that the 'color play' was part of a Gay Pride festival? Have the local police investigated the possibility of foul play? Nope, I'm not into conspiracy theories, but it is the job of police to rule out 'foul play' before blithely assuming it was all just a terrible accident.

Update Saturday July 11

Here's a somewhat disturbing discovery from browsing through suppliers' sites for commercial gases. This one is admittedly propane gas only, but note the colour of the cylinder, the same light grey as the one in my Taipei video screen-shot:

Update: 15 July

Hallelluja. Wilipedia has finally recognized that some form or propulsion was needed to get all that powder airborne so quickly, and in such quantity. Here's its new(ish) edit, from which i've removed the reference numbers. (My bolding)

"The concert organizers deployed colored corn starch powder in the
festivities. The method of powder application at the concert created "an
extremely dense dust cloud over the stage and its immediate vicinity"
people near the stage were standing "almost ankle-deep" in colored corn
starch powder, and the powder was repeatedly suspended into the air
using air blowers as well as compressed gas canister."

But it's still failing to be specific as regards what was inside the "compressed gas canister" as if that were of no relevance. In fact, some press reports describe it as CO2 gas, which by itself might allay suspicions (mine) that the propellant gas had a role to play. But this blogger has seen one comment that after the initial conflagration one quick-thinking individual on the stage picked up a "CO2 cylinder" and deployed it on the (reasonable) assumption it could serve as a fire extinguisher. But that created a fresh fireball, which the commenter put down to the gas having blaster still more powder into the air.

When is it going to be recognized that thee could have been a mix up with cylinders, that the propellant gas was not CO2 but a mix of liquified petroleum gases, e.g. the propane/butane/isobutane mix mentioned earlier? Wikipedia is doing us all a disservice, being more a hindrance than a help in establishing the facts, the first step of which is to rule out plausible alternatives to initial preconceptions.

But I continue to despair of the comments we read, now few and far between, as to the cause of the conflagration, and the report above leaves me none the wiser.

Right at the end, we read:

An investigation showed the hottest parts of the stage lights hit
temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, while the powder's
ignition point was just 500 degrees Celsius.

The "hottest part" of stage light is the electric filament, which if tungsten can get much hotter than 1000 degrees. But it's not a bare filament, exposed to air. It's encased in metal and glass, which is constructed so to be realtively cool and safe, so as not to burn anyone who inadvertently brushes again it. So why are they STILL talking about the stage light as the source of ignition?

My initial suggestion was that a cylinder of flammable gas, e.g. propane or butane, had inadvertently been used to disperse the powder. Later, I read another report suggesting it might have been a cylinder of compressed air (or maybe even pure oxygen?) that had been used, promoting ignition and combustion, which while less probable is not beyond the realms of the possible.

Naturally one needs to see a more detailed report than a single sentence in a UK newspaper, but for the moment I not only remain deeply sceptical about the "stage lights" hypothesis. I'm beginning to suspect there's been some kind of cover up and/or an attempt to divert attention from the real cause of the tragedy. If anyone reading this has 'inside information' please don't hesitate to contact, either by leaving a comment, or by direct means to sciencebod01 (at) aol.com.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Let's stop beating about the bush shall we ? The image of the man on the Turin Shroud is an imprint (not a painting as Charles Freeman would have us believe), I repeat, an IMPRINT. It's a contact imprint, to be more precise (no physical contact, no image). This blogger/retired scientist has previously enumerated at least 15 reasons why the TS image an imprint, and does not need to repeat them here.(But since they are buried in the tail end of a previous posting, I shall be listing them here later as an appendix).

This posting focuses on just one feature of the Shroud image which is consistent with the view that the image is a contact imprint. I then make what some will see as a bald assertion, namely that if it's possible to reproduce the 'look' of that image, with its imprint features, then it almost certainly IS an imprint.

The onus would then be on others who think otherwise, who have their own hypotheses, or as often or not fantasies as to how the image was produced, to do what I (with some assistance from my wife) have done this morning, namely to model their ideas experimentally. If they cannot, or will not do that, then their ideas are unscientific, and need detain this scientist no further.

Here's the selected feature of interest - the crossed hands. Here's how they appear on the Shroud.

Answer: yes. approximately, what you see here being the second attempt using the more controllable of two alternative modes of presenting linen to flour paste-coated subject.

The mode? What I call LOTTO (Linen On Top, Then Overlay) - a towel - gently pressed downwards. That's as distinct from yesterday, using the less manageable LUWU (Linen Underneath, With Underlay, which gave excessive lateral distortion).The imprinting medium? Yes, a simple paste or glue of plain white flour and water, mixed to give a runny consistency. Stage 2 development of tan-colour? Simply pressing with a hot iron.

Photoedited image? Certainly. used the same settings as the earlier ones for the Shroud Scope image(-7,100, 15). Fix? Judge for yourself. Here's the unedited photograph, prior to rotation to assist comparison with the Shroud.

"As is' imprint., withoit photo-enhancement.

Note the relative absence of lateral distortion. Was that entirely due to using LOTTO instead of LUWU? No. There's a simple way of avoiding lateral distortion in this model. Apply paste only to those parts of the relief that one wished to be imaged, i.e. the highest relief, to get a bas relief type effect, avoiding the sides.

Is the image reasonably permanent? Impossible to tell, unless one has a handy cathedral in which to store it, and lots of patience (several centuries at least). But the image does withstand (a) repeated rinsing and wringing out with cold water, drying and ironing:

Water-washed, before (left) and after (right) photo-enhancement (-7,100,15)

and (b)the above, followed by application of soap and water, followed again by drying and ironing.

Soap -washed, before (left) and after (right) photoenhancement (-7,100,15)

Conclusion:there would appear to be nothing in the least bit mysterious about the 2D image characteristics of the Shroud image, once it is appreciated that the image is a contact imprint (the negative light/dark reversed nature of the image alone should be sufficient to conclude that the image is an imprint - NOT a painting, not even a faded, degraded painting).

What about the "profoundly mysterious" 3D properties of the Shroud image? Do my imprints respond to 3D enhancement in ImageJ?

Judge for yourself, dear reader:

3D rendering: click to enlarge

Finally: light/dark reversal (to change the negative imprint to a pseudo-positive image, mimicking a photograph, as per Secondo Pia (1898)?

Simple light/dark reversal in Image J

As above, with 3D enhancement.

That'll do for now. Publish and be damned.
I say the Turin shroud is a medieval fake, produced by a simple two stage procedure: imprinting with an organic substance (which may well have been white flour, which has convenient adhesive properties)followed by second stage colour development (thermal in this posting, though chemical development is also feasible - see previous postings which used nitric acid or limewater).

Update, Thursday 25 June: I shall repeat the above experiment today using my wife's crossed hands instead of my own. To show the versatility of the technique there will be subtraction of an unwanted feature (rings), simply by taping over, thus protecting from the imprinting medium and, conversely, maybe the addition of something else, e.g. paste in an area that would normally escape imprinting.

The result was broadly similar to the one above, except for the additional tests. The location of the protected ring can be see as a blank rectangle.There blank region where one hand abuts on the other was marked with three small dabs of flour paste from a paint brush. What these tests show is the ease with which wanted or unwanted features can be added or removed by masking or 'doctoring' the imprint prior to colour development.

The 3D-rendered version of the above image was somewhat disappointing:

The reasons are probably technical, to do with using too viscous a paste which did not apply evenly (see banding on right wrist). You win some, you lose some.

I shall also make a start on that Appendix (why the TS is an imprint, not a painting), but build it up in instalments (no need for a rush job: what's another few hours or days extra on a 3.5 year project now drawing to a close?). Expect the first 3 or 4 points later in the day. (They were added, and have since disappeared - the Blogger Editing Bug is back!)

Simple answers to simple questions

1. But what about the blood? You have to explain the blood.

The priority on this site has been the "enigmatic" body image (negative, superficial, 3D properties, impossible to reproduce by any known technology etc). So why divert attention to the blood when confronted with answers to the supposed image conundrum? Blood can wait till later (while noting that the new procedure allows the forger to 'paint' the subject with imprinting medium first, then 'paint' with blood on top of imprinting medium, then imprint, thus ensuring there's a strong, direct contact between blood and linen with imprinting medium on top instead of underneath (in agreement with the Adler/Heller results with protease enzyme).

2. To stand any chance of being taken seriously, you will have to match every single detail of the Shroud.

No I don't. The Shroud we see today is unlikely to be the same in all respects as the one that existed 700 years ago or longer. What has to be matched in a scientific approach are those features that make the Shroud uniquely different from all other images from the pre-photographic era, notably the negative image, the absence of known pigments, dyes etc, the extreme superficiality etc.

3. There was no white flour in medieval times, and even if there had been, it would have differed from the modern flour used in your experiments (genetics, added chemicals, nutrients etc.)

Flour in my experiments is a forger's 'proxy' for bodily sweat, because it makes a good imprinting medium, being sticky, and because it's easily convertible from white to yellow with heat or chemicals. However, the forger may have used something different that served the same purpose - imprinting medium/source of yellow colour. So it hardly matters whether white flour was available or not. In fact, it's a common misconception that white flour only became available after the arrival of 19th century roller milling. The well-off with deep pockets could purchase white flour, which was easily if laboriously made by sieving stone-ground wholemeal flour through fabric screens to remove the large particles of bran and wheatgerm embryo).

4. If the technology for forging the Shroud existed in the 14th century, then why is there only one Shroud?

Answer: because someone who had the resources to fabricate a convincing holy relic, one that can be claimed to be the actual linen used to envelop the crucified Jesus, would have needed to ensure that the technology remained a secret known only to the perpetrators. It would have compromised the mission objectives entirely if there had been so much as a single prototype version abandoned in the corner of a workshop.

5. What gives you the right to insult the intelligence of scores of academics and professionals, many with distinguished records of research, with your tacky simplistic model which you yourself have described as a Blue Peter 'make'?

If the model were that simplistic, this retired researcher, who also has a record of research and modest achievement, would not have needed 3.5 years to conceive of it. The trouble with arriving late to an active area of research is the deadweight of 'received wisdom' that in many instances has hardened into rock-solid dogma. It's hard not to be influenced by the big cheeses of Shroudology who descend onto websites to say one is barking up the wrong tree, that such and such was discounted decades ago, that one should "go acquaint oneself with the literature". In fact the current model incorporates many existing ideas - from Ray Rogers, Luigi Garlaschelli, Hugh Farey and Joe Accetta. But the key aspect was the realization that the body imprint was intended to represent ancient yellowed sweat, that it was not intended to represent a product of post-mortem putrefaction, nor a miraculous image imprinted by a flash of highly energetic radiation, of a type unknown to science, a signature of resurrection, or as some would have us belive, a love-letter to modern man (that being the case, why the 'wrong' answer for radiocarbon dating?).

6. It's just a rehash of the scorch hypothesis, and we all know that was ruled out a long time ago (only the most superficial layers of Shroud fibres are affected, no change to the central medulla, lack of uv fluorescence etc).

Sure, the current variant uses heat to develop the Shroud-like coloration in the imprint, but the temperature needed to do that was insufficient to affect that of the non-imprinted linen, except maybe for an exceedingly faint tinge which could be mistaken for aged linen (a beneficial effect?). But other alternatives exist - like nitric acid and other chemicals. Scorching is just one way of producing yellowing, one that requires pyrolysis (thermal degradation) of the linen fibres themselves. Use of an extraneous coating layer (flour etc) opens up additional possibilities where chemistry is concerned (caramelization of sugars, Maillard reactions between sugars and protein, nitration of proteins etc).

It's not news. In fact, it's been known for decades that chlorine
reacts with the nitrogenous waste compounds of sweat, urine etc to make
nitrogen trichloride (NCl3). The pure compound is an oily liquid that is
highly explosive. Yes, it has a very strong and distinctive smell of
stale over-subscribed "swimming pool" (unhygienic ones that is). As the
article indicates, a "shock" treatment with surplus chlorine helps
break down the NCl3, but is a last resort, prevention (pre-showering
and/or bladder control) being better than cure.

On a different
matter I'd like to tell science writer Lily and anyone else who's
interested about my latest experiments for modelling the Shroud of Turin
image. I think I know how it was done. Anyone interested? Do you read
the comments under your own article Lily? I call it the Blue Peter
method (needing only linen,flour paste and a hot iron) but it took 3
years of hard slog with scores of progress/lack of progress reports to
figure it out!

The breakthrough came when I realized that the
Shroud body image was intended by its medieval fabricators (forgers?) to
represent a SWEAT imprint, so in a sense there's an affinity with this
topic of bodily secretions and their aftermath.
ColinB

So far we've been told next to nothing about the chemistry, except that a "coloured powder ignited".

If one looks at the video clip that accompanies the BBC report (see link) one sees a cloud of white vapour coming from the stage immediately before the conflagration. At a normal gig that would be the fog produced when dry ice (solid CO2) is dropped into water.

Dry ice and water - NOT the effect used at the Taiwan water park.

But CO2 extinguishes fire. Might it have been liquified propane or butane instead, as used in spray cans etc? In other words, it wasn't the coloured solid, whatever that was, that was the culprit, but a flammable gaseous propellant. Propane gas (C3H8) has about 1.5 times the density of air, butane (C4H10) more than double, so would tend briefly to hug the ground before dispersal via diffusion. We shall see. Burns are terrible things. My sympathies to all the victims and their loved ones.Update on that BBC report: 14:25 French time"The fire department said the powder ,used to create a party
atmosphere, may have ignited due to the heat of the lights on the stage,
or from sparks from machinery. The substance is also used in
other countries. It is made of dried corn and can be highly flammable,
says the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei.The 519 victims were sent to 41 hospitals, and 413 are still in hospital, say municipal authorities."

Flammable solid maybe, but it still needed a propellant gas to shower it over the crowd. I still suspect itr was the propellant gas that ignited first.

Update 16:40

Here's a freeze-frame from the video clip that accompanied the Telegraph's report:

Video still: Taiwan water park, immediately prior to fireball

A instant later, the white cloud of vapour (butane?) was replaced by an orange fireball.

Reminder: this blogger has been reporting his attempts to model the Shroud in over 300 postings, here and on his specialist Shroud site, since December 2011. What you read here describes in moderate language the conviction that the goal is in sight - that the image is a contact imprint, obtained by a two step procedure. Stephen Jones has done no modelling whatsoever. He is not a research investigator, certainly not in any experimental hands-on sense. He is perhaps better described as someone with a particular brand of hardline theology, one who is polemical - talking up those studies that are pro-authenticity, and attempting to dismiss, sometimes in the most contemptuous terms those that aren't. The idea that the two of us are both extreme, opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak, is a classic Porter windup, as was his concluding with: "Is there some way to put these two in a room together and tell them they can’t come out until they agree on everything?"

This blogger sorely regrets the time and effort spent on communicating his evolving ideas on that site. Porter is a purveyor of glib. He has nothing useful to say - nothing whatsoever. He and his site merely act as a sponge for other people's content.

Update 29th June

Have decided to make a new posting of that frightful Taiwan fireball.

Returning to the Shroud, where are these mysterious locations on a man's recumbent body that could only have been imaged by "action at a distance"? Please list them.

Reminder: in the latest model, using white flour paste as imprinting medium, there is a truly amazing moulding of linen to contours, as my photographs show. There is no need to invoke "action at a distance". That simply opens the door to pseudo-science (self-collimated radiation, unknown to science, wavelength unspecified, able to project an imprint across air gaps onto linen as if the latter were a photographic emulsion).

But then I've asked that before, several times, and received no response. Why bother trying to communicate with those who simply parrot their mantras and who refuse to respond in detail to one's questions and objections?

I repeat: please specify the parts of the naked human anatomy that are visible on the Shroud image but which would be inaccessible in a contact-only model, with manual fingertip moulding. A numbered list would be nice.

Further update:we're also told that there's an unacceptable degree of lateral distortion in my contact imprints of crossed hands. Really?

But the individual making that judgement of Solomon (same as the one above) cannot have read this posting in detail. One can have as much or as little lateral distortion as one wishes, depending on how much of the "sides" one decides to paint with imprinting medium, or indeed, tries to avoid altogether. I in fact over-painted when doing my wife's hands, having strayed onto the base of the thumb, which explains that otherwise peculiar and unsightly bulge one sees in the imprint.

In fact, I recently came across a paper recently (must try and locate) in which someone was saying there was a small degree of lateral distortion in the Shroud image, and that it would be difficult if not impossible for a forger to reproduce it. Talk about wanting to have one's cake and eat it...

The usual response one sees to the crossed hands on the Shroud is that the fingers are too long, too bony, too x-ray like. Some have even gone so far as to suggest Marfan's syndrome! Given the response to my own (or wife's crossed hands) as too distorted, we maybe have an explanation for those TS hands: the fabricators were so concerned at the prospect of "normal" hand imprints being seen as too pudgy or distorted they decided to err in the opposite direction, deploying a minimalist application of imprinting medium, and happy to hear the hands as somewhat skeletal, with fingers too long and spindly. That's better than hearing them described as an obvious imprint. "Skeletal" at least implies death, preceded maybe with acute trauma.

Then there's the legion of folk queuing up to say "your image looks nothing like the one on the Shroud".

What they mean is, nothing like the original one that was on the Shroud, that may have well been subject to some 'toning down', if only as a result of the testing of its permanence in the years following its first appearance, compounded by the effects of centuries of wear and tear. (Link) Which brings us to the present: it's said that the image disappears if one tries to view it at close quarters. One has to step back 3 metres or more to see it's an image of a man. So how can anyone be so certain as to the 'look' of the Shroud image when their view is based on a limited number of photographs, more or less enhanced to improve contrast against background?

As I've said many times before, this researcher is not attempting to produce a facsimile copy of the TS, and would be unwise to do so, given the uncertainties of ageing etc. He's MODELLING the TS image, attempting to put ticks in all those boxes for the various key descriptors like faint, superficial, negative, 3D properties, no unequivocal reverse side image, no uv fluorescence, no known pigments or dyes, strippability when fibres are pulled from Mylar adhesive tape etc etc.

There are those who seem to skip that list, and focus on characteristics like "image resolution" "fuzziness" etc, with little or no attempt to quantify. They may indeed be the ones that dictate first impressions when comparing the TS with model systems. if that is the case, then it's worth making clear immediately that these are early days regarding the present model. We know that washing the primary image in water, and then soap, leads to fainter, arguably fuzzier image. But there are other ways of achieving the same result, notably by using a progressively thinner, runnier flour paste (yet to be tested). What matters right now is the principle: the simple 'Blue Peter' yes-you-kiddies-can-do-this-in-your-own- home methodology ticks a sizeable number of boxes, which is more than can be said for those high energy laser beams that so far leave nothing more than a tiny brown patch on linen (no image!). My medieval technology may seem primitive by comparison (deliberately so) but it does produce an image ( as a contact imprint) as anyone can confirm for themselves, in their own home, in the space of 30 minutes or so.

Update July 6th

When the linen in my 'Blue Peter' model is thoroughly washed, first in water, then with soap, all that remains finally is a faint 'ghost' image. There can be so little there in material terms that it becomes a major headache in analytical terms determining the chemical nature of the chromophore. But that is equally true of the Shroud image layer too, where next to nothing is known re chemical makeup.Who can say whether it's a product of caramelization (requiring sugars and maybe oxygen only) or whether it's a Maillard reaction product (requiring sugars and proteins, or some other source of amino groups?). As I think I said recently, my model system could be handy for developing non-destructive spectral techniques for distinguishing between the two possibilities listed, and maybe more besides.

Is there anything that can be done in the meantime to get a rough idea as to what we're dealing with, specifically the type of sugar involved (given that both caramelization and Maillard reactions require free sugars)? Maybe. In Maillard reactions, it's known that pentose (5-carbon) sugars are more reactive than hexose (6 carbon sugars), while still needing elevated temperature (belatedly recognized by Ray Rogers, even if his fan club has yet to catch up). In other words, one should be focusing attention less on the major constituent of flax/linen bast fibres (cellulose), or, if entertaining the possibility of coatings from flour etc, less on the major starch component. Attention should be on those parts of the linen and/or coating that provide pentose sugars. In the case of linen that is the primary cell wall that has a high percentage of hemicelluloses, and to a lesser extent the much more substantial secondary cell wall in which those pentose-rich hemicelluloses are also present, albeit at much lower concentration relative to the cellulose.

Expressed in these terms, there is a means of testing whether pentose sugars play a crucial role or not in the Blue Peter image, and by hopeful analogy, the Shroud image too. Cotton is mainly cellulose, with very little hemicellulose. So what I need to do is paste cotton and linen in the one experiment, then apply the same hot iron to both, and then check the intensity of the resulting mark or image before and after washing. Prediction: both will give a prominent pre-wash image, due to reactions involving the pentose sugars in the white flour. But there will be little or no ghost image finally on the cotton after washing, because cotton lacks the pentose sugars needed, whether in the primary cell wall (if present) or the secondary cell wall. I'll try to do that experiment shortly, but it won't be today, or even tomorrow. Shroud research is no longer my top priority, having resumed an interest in other topics that were shelved when Paolo di Lazzaro came along with his ultraviolet laser beams in December 2011, claiming that the TS image could not be accounted for with conventional science. To which I say: OH YES IT CAN!!!

Update: Am toying with the idea of subjecting linen and cotton to a range of chemical pre-treatments, to see which if any modify the subsequent behaviour towards 2 stage imprinting. One would look at strong acid, alkali, bleach, SO2, boiling in water or salt or detergent, enzyme treatment (pectinase etc), organic solvents, etc etc. The aim is to get some idea of the nature of the physical or chemical interaction that allows the final ghost image, i.e. the one that remains after vigorous washing and rubbing with soap, to bond so firmly to the fabric.

7. Press with hot iron on opposite side from imprint (highest temperature setting) on part of the flour imprint. Leave one side cold as control.

8. Result - a faint image, reminiscent of the Turin Shroud.

9. Is the image wash-resistant? Detach a test portion (right)

10.The imprint withstood 15 minutes immersion in cold water

11. Would it withstand washing with soap?

12. Answer - yes, though a little fainter.

This is very simple technology, needless to say, requiring only plain flour and a hot flat iron (smoothing irons must surely have existed in the 14th century, when the Shroud of Turin was first put on public display (Lirey, France, circa 1357).

Regardless of authenticity, this simple demonstration is my answer to those investigators in Italy and elsewhere who claim that the image of Shroud of Turin can never be reproduced under laboratory conditions. It CAN be reproduced, at least as regards macroscopic aspects, in one's own home living room. Microscopic characteristics need further investigation.

The fourth combination, i.e. reducing sugar (linen fibres)/protein/amino acids (linen fibres), is not listed since that would account only for the slight "scorching" of background linen one sees outside the image areas, i.e. background coloration.

There is also the possibility that proteins are not involved, that the tan coloured image is the result of pyrolysis (aka caramelisation) reactions involving carbohydrates only. Expect to see a postscript here shortly (a few days at most) on the effect of replacing whole white flour with gluten-free starch. The latter will use starch granules isolated from white flour by water-washing and sedimentation, as described in an earlier post here in which nitric acid was used for colour development of the primary imprint, dubbed the "stick 'n' stain" variant of the generic 2-stage imprinting/developing model.

Speaking of which, nitric acid that is, which was the first means of Stage 2 colour development to be reported on this site, its use is emblazoned on the banner of this blogger's specialist Shroud site., despite being a vicious corrosive reagent towards human flesh,.

But which of the two chief variants of 2-stage imprinting (3 if one counts the promising results with hot limewater) would medieval forgers have been more likely to use:(a) the use of a hot smoothing iron, as described here, or (b) exposure to nitric acid vapour or solution?

Is the hot iron (or maybe an oven roasting) more likely than treatment with a novelty chemical reagent that was probably little known in the 14th century outside of alchemists' secretive laboratories? Do I need to substitute a collage showing the steps in this posting for the one you see above, if only to flag up the variant that is more user-friendly, i.e. safer to deploy in one's own 21st century home should any readers be minded to check out the claims made here?

I shall make the collage, but may not replace the present one immediately. Better maybe to hold fire on whether the putative forger of the Turin Shroud was more physically or chemically minded. (He did not need to know the chemistry of Maillard reactions to make an educated guess that a hot iron would scorch a flour imprint more readily than the linen on which it was deposited). (Afterthought: I could make a twin-collage, showing both the "iron" versus "non-iron" method. There's no need to make an instant decision as to which was more probable in the mid-14th century.)

But there again, our medieval forgers, even if alchemist- (aka proto-chemist)- assisted, did not need to know the molecular mechanism as to how nitric acid reacts with proteins to give a yellow colour (xanthoproteic reaction). All they needed to know was its reputation for staining skin yellow, and then have seized on that as a way of simulating an ancient then 1300 year old whole body imprint (as sweat) by imprinting with ANY convenient organic substance - a proxy for sweat - and developing chemically with any reagent that might turn it a permanent non-fading yellow.

Here's a link to a site on the history of ironing. It's not entirely clear when the box iron, loaded with hot charcoal, first put in an appearance (one trusts they knew to keep the windows open, to avoid deadly carbon monoxide poisoning).

Were they incorporated right from the start - when the TS image was created, using a box-iron to develop the colour? If so, then from the symmetry, the linen would have been folded in 4 - lengthwise then width-wise (see above link). It's not impossible that the linen would have been folded before 2nd stage thermal development. Indeed, that might provide an explanation for the divider-like faint longitudinal and transverse 'seams' one sees, somewhat paler than the rest of the body image or background regions.

Later thoughts: prompted by the result of the wash tests with water then soap/water, one could hypothesize/rationalize as follows. When the imprint is heated with the iron, there are two distinct Maillard reactions - one with the flour "impurity layer" and one with the linen itself, each providing carbohydrate, protein or both. It's the browned coating with its Maillard/caramelized products that washes off with soap and water, but those associated with the linen fibres stay put. It is presumably the latter we see today in the faint, scarcely visible image. Originally, the image would have been more intense, due to the impurity derived carbohydrate and/or protein. For Charles Freeman to claim as he does that investigators have totally ignored image degradation over the centuries (to sustain his scientifically-bankrupt line that the TS is 'just a painting') is not only wrong. It is insulting. Maybe if he took the time to read the scientific literature, instead of dismissing scientists as art history philistines, which they may or may not be (it being of little consequence and probably irrelevant where the enigmatic TS negative imprints is concerned) he would see that image degradation is something that always has to be factored into everyone's thinking, and indeed is and has been, whether formally acknowledged or not, at least where this investigator is concerned. The man is way, way out of his depth in attempting to brush aside decades of detailed scientific investigation that shows the TS image is UNIQUE, and cannot therefore be subsumed into art history, least of all when that requires the qualifying assumption (read fix) that the original artist's pigment have (conveniently) detached leaving no trace of their original presence, merely an unexplained negative image (which Freeman mistook at least initially to mean left-right reversed, as in a mirror image). Forgive my saying Charles, but you're an incorrigible time waster.

Update: 21 June

Have separated starch from gluten, and tested them singly and in combination with a hot iron. No obvious browning reactions were seen. It might be soluble flour proteins that are needed for a Maillard reaction (gluten protein is highly insoluble, which explains why it's so easy to separate from starch granules, simply by washing out the latter from a stiff dough with water). Soluble reducing sugars of flour may also be needed, with intact starch not substituting, even at high temperature.While it's of interest scientifically to understand the chemistry, in particular to confirm or disprove the presumed Maillard reaction, ignorance of the precise chemistry does not detract from the hypothesis proposed, namely that the TS image was formed by a browning reaction in an extraneous organic material imprinted onto linen, probably flour glue (its adhesive properties making it an imprinting medium par excellence).

Note there was an estimable 127 comments when I did that screenshot a few minutes ago. Some of them are mine (as Colin Steven, the first two thirds of this blogger's full name). Began with a brief plug for the latest 'hot iron' model, it being simplicity itself, though the Mail does not as I recall permit links so I chose not to risk it. Got into a quite upmarket discussion (for the hard-bitten, don't-give-me-that-bullsh*t regular clientele of the Mail that is) with one "Birchy of Blackburn" who says he knows this blogger from "Mr. Porter's site". Has he left comments there one wonders? Can't say as I recall input from the north of England.

Thank goodness those green up-vote arrows and red down-vote arrows of the Mail are not copied more extensively. They seem to bring out the worst in people. I much prefer systems like Disqus, where a down-vote simply reduces the tally of up-votes.

Speaking of which (Disqus) here's an opportunist comment placed just a minute ago on the Disqus-hosted Telegraph:

Title: "The Pope" ... "sad world of make believe".
Fiddlesticks.
For one moment I thought that might be a reference to his paying homage to
the Shroud of Turin, allowing one shamelessly to plug (without
splitting an infinitive) the latest Blue Peter* "Make Your Own Turin
Shroud" shamelessly immodest breakthrough discovery. (Link to this posting).

Simply
paint a gluey cold water slurry of plain white flour onto one's 3D
subject - whether a real person or a bas relief (probably the latter for
the face), imprint onto linen, then press the dried imprint with a
really hot iron (linen setting). Hey presto, one gets a negative
sepia-coloured Shroud-like image of one's subject.Nope, it won't wash
out, so may well be permanent. It may even display those 'mysterious'
3D properties if you use dowloadable software (ImageJ etc) that excels
in finding "3D" wherever there's tonal contrast in one's 2D image.

Yup, strictly for home (UK) consumption, I call it the Blue Peter model, it being one you can try at home.

"Here's one we made earlier"

Next experiment: the face/head is the major problem as regards contact imprinting. Luigi Garlaschelli said as much, and considered that a bas relief was needed in place of a real face. But why? Most of the face is fairly flat relief, except for (a) the nose and (b) the eye hollows. That's provided one has made a decision NOT to imprint the sides of the face, so as to avoid lateral distortion. It is a simple matter to imprint off the highest relief, simply by patting the linen vertically downwards against 3D relief, never sideways.

Is it mainly the nose that is the problem? What kind of imprint might one obtain if an imprint were taken with linen that had a cut-out, allowing the nose to protrude/poke through? It's a purely theoretical exercise of course, designed to see if the nose is the major problem, and seeing what kind of contact image is obtainable if the nose is prevented from causing too much deformity in the linen.

It was quite difficult to see any 3D imaging of the nose using ImageJ in its Thermal LUT mode. That might be telling us something (like the substitution of a more forger-friendly bas relief for a real face?)

I shall also try imprinting crossed hands as per Shroud.. There's a simple explanation for why the thumbs are missing. Try crossing your own hands, dear reader, as per Shroud, in such a way as to lock them together, to prevent one sliding on the other. Where's the best place to put the thumbs? The 'thumbless' hands may be prima facie evidence for imprinting off a LIVE cooperative subject who's been told to maintain a fixed immobile position (as if deceased) while imprinting is in progress.

Update Tuesday June 23

Yes those are the next two mini-projects - modelling the crossed hands and "noseless " face, in that order.

The image on the left are the crossed hands one sees with Shroud Scope (Durante, 2002 with added contrast). At first sight it looks as if the subject's right hand is crossed over his left, partly obscuring the latter. But it's an imprint which creates a mirror image (left-right reversed). The image on the right shows how the subject would have looked had one seen him with one's own eyes and/or taken a photograph. So that is the configuration that I (or my partner) will have to adopt prior to pasting with flour glue, draping with linen and then imprinting: left hand will be placed over right. The thumb of the left hand will be slipped out of sight behind the wrist of the right hand, serving as an anti-slide lock (see earlier) so will escape being imaged. Likewise the thumb of the right hand - which will simply be kept out of sight by hiding behind the fingers of the same hand. Yes, those "missing thumbs" are easily accounted for in a contact imprinting model. Why might a forger not want thumbs "in the picture"? Easy. Look at one's own hand. The thumb is not in the same plane as the fingers, being rotated at almost 90 degrees out of plane. It also occupies a lower horizontal plane than the fingers unless the hand is pressed flat against a hard surface. Any attempt to imprint the thumbs risks producing a result that looks a bit "wrong" as an imprint, even if anatomically correct. Solution: tuck the thumbs out of sight, so they don't get imprinted. Summary: left hand will be crossed over right, then the two coated with flour paste. Linen will be draped over and patted gently, with no attempt to imprint right into the junction of the two hands, thereby achieving that gap in the image where the linen has bridged the step between higher and lower levels. I may even place a small adhesive pad at the approximate site one would expect a nail to be used if through the palm rather than wrist to see where it appears as a dimple on the imprinted image.

Afterthought: one does not wait for one's partner to be free if one imprints in "LUWU" instead of normal "LOTTO" presentation. LUWU (Linen Underneath With Underlay) is where the linen is draped over something soft, like several thicknesses of bath towel, and the "subject" pressed into it from above. That can be done solo to get a quickie result. What's more it's more likely to have gaps in the image due to bridging across steps in level, because there's no means of manually moulding linen to contours unless in LOTTO mode (Linen On Top, Then Overlay).
Preliminary result: will appear here shortly.

Flour imprint of my own crossed hands, LUWU mode, before and after photo-enhancement.

The image on the left is the as-is imprint ( no photediting) that stubbornly remained after (a) thorough rinsing and kneading with cold water (b) vigorous brushing of surface with a tiff-bristle toothbrush (c) application of soap and water. In other words, the image, while very faint (as per Turin Shroud!) is one that might still be there in years, decades, mainly longer. The image on the right is the same, after applying my favourite settings in Microsoft Office Picture Manager (mainly an increase in contrast, with minor adjustment to brightness and midtone setting). Note the missing region (as per Shroud!) where the linen has bridged the height-difference between upper and lower hand.

Negative aspects: there is excessive lateral distortion, an effect no doubt of employing the LUWU imprinting mode with too soft and underlay, causing too much contact between linen and the sides of the wrist etc. That can be easily remedied by switching to LOTTO mode (tomorrow), using manual moulding. My wife has agreed to be the subject, but that will require hands folded in the opposite configuration (right over left) to avoid contact between flour paste and rings!.

Update: Have been accused of trolling for the first of 5 comments placed on a Christopher Booker thread in the Telegraph (currently 6737 comments in total!).

Judge for yourselves dear reader whether this blogger is a troll. Here are ALL my comments to that thread in chronological order. That's not counting the hundreds I used to send to the Telegraph some 2-4 years ago on the topic of climate change when it was a main interest.

Methinks there's a certain blogmeister in South Carolina, USA who needs to lighten up. He also needs to stop using that obsessional single-issue site of his to snipe and make wholly unjustified character attacks.

Title: "The Pope" ... "sad world of make believe".
Fiddlesticks.
For one moment I thought that might be a reference to his paying homage
to the Shroud of Turin, allowing one shamelessly to plug (without
splitting an infinitive) the latest Blue Peter "Make Your Own Turin
Shroud" shamelessly immodest breakthrough discovery.

(Link to this site).
Simply
paint a gluey cold water slurry of plain white flour onto one's 3D
subject - whether a real person or a bas relief (probably the latter for
the face), imprint onto linen, then press the dried imprint with a
really hot iron (linen setting). Hey presto, one gets a negative
sepia-coloured Shroud-like image of one's subject. Nope, it won't wash
out, so may well be permanent. It may even display those 'mysterious'
3D properties if you use dowloadable software (ImageJ etc) that excels
in finding "3D" wherever there's tonal contrast in one's 2D image.

Seems there's been an awful lot of going up - right from the time
when CO2 records began, without a single break in the upward trend.
Guess we'll just have to be patient and wait for it suddenly to start
zig-zagging, and then collapse back again, as you seem to be
optimistically forecasting. Ah, those confident forecasts. Seems they exist on both sides of the argument.

You surely don't think there could have been that amount of
fluctuation in the 19th century CO2 levels, i.e. in different parts of
the globe, in different years, so as to make the average the same or
even higher than today's?
If the state-of-the-art measurements we
get today show consistent values centred around 0.039% (? adjusted for
geographical location, seasonal effects etc, proximity to volcanoes etc)
that are consistently nudging upwards year-on-year then some
might think it's scarcely possibly that levels were yo-yoying wildly as
your cited chart suggests when Trollope or Dickens were writing their
novels, and went on doing so right through to the sudden stabilizing
effect of 'Love Me Do' and the Merseybeat.

Thanks for the clarification. I checked your link. It's a snapshot of
course, with a relatively narrow time window - 6 weeks- with most of
the extra CO2 coming from south of the equator. Reasons? Maybe
biodegrading of old roots and foliage before new growth and/or rainy
seasons get underway. Am not sure. But the pattern on that chart is a
result, needless to say, of unequal heating of the Earth's surface and
the seasonal effects due to the Earth's axis being tilted relative to
its plane of rotation about the Sun. Those same effects create climate
but also weather of course, i.e. cyclonic updraughts in the tropics,
anti cyclonic down-draughts in the more temperate regions, all helping
to even out and eventually equalizing the localized excess or deficit of
CO2 relative to the global mean. Moral: beware snapshots, even those on
6 weeks long exposure if discussing weather and/or climate. Best to
focus on annual averages, where the CO2 chart is a smooth consistently upwards curve, not the sawtooth one we see in plots of month-by-month values.

AGW or not? Here we have a supra-scientific, quasi-theological
conundrum, one that is setting one Homo interneticus at the throat of
another. But there are far more important issues (well, immediate ones)
that need our attention, like external threats to our polity and way
of life. Sorry, grandchildren, you'll have to wait your turn in the
queue.
We need the equivalent of the First Council of Nicea
urgently to thrash out the issues, to adjudicate, and then rule on
what's a heresy (or at any rate, a sterile tail-chasing exercise that
helps no one) and what's orthodoxy.
Or there again, we could
compromise (old English pastime). Let's watch closely what happens to
the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. If there's progressive melting,
regardless of what happens to air or sea temperature, then we can
conclude the planet is warming dangerously, and take no chances with
those GHGs . Get those solar panels installed and quick.
If on the
other hand the ice cover were to remain the same, give or take a few
good years and bad years, then let's discuss other more important issues
affecting our security and welfare, like, say, the current visa-free
mass migration via overloaded vessel from Africa into Europe, the
progressive sovietization of the eurozone, the imminent incorporation of
Greece into the Russian sphere of influence...

Today, I've put up another 7 or so comments on an entirely different topic, but not a single plug anywhere to my new Shroud model. That trolling must have been a passing phase...

From
Colin in “the Telegraph”: “Simply paint a gluey cold water slurry of
plain white flour onto one’s 3D subject – whether a real person or a bas
relief (probably the latter for the face), imprint onto linen, then
press the dried imprint with a really hot iron (linen setting). Hey
presto, one gets a negative sepia-coloured Shroud-like image of one’s
subject. Nope, it won’t wash out, so may well be permanent. It may even
display those ‘mysterious’ 3D properties if you use downloadable software
(ImageJ etc) that excels in finding “3D” wherever there’s tonal
contrast in one’s 2D image.”

Colin seems to be a very strange person.

Here and on his own blog he looks like a true scientist.

Now, in “the Telegraph” (!!), we have the very simple final answer.

No Colin, your results have nothing to do with the TS image properties.

Is Colin serious or not ?

Yes, Colin is serious, even when he writes to the Telegraph. TH may not be aware, that this blogger has a long association with the Telegraph. It was at a Telegraph/E.on -sponsored BrainsTrust ("Talking Energy") that he got to meet and talk to Sir David King, UK's Chief Scientific Adviser and other influential policy makers on various matters to do with Green initiatives. I'll see if I can find some links (from 5 or 6 years ago). Yup, here's something unearthed from from the sciencebod archives.

Daily Telegraph Jan 2, 2010

Close-up. lower right. That's your host, who was invited to pen 10 weekly blogs for the main newspaper, and then invited to put the first question to the expert panel.

l.

And yes, Colin is deadly serious about the new simple two-stage imprinting process. It may not have used white flour (which incidentally was available to the well-off in medieval times, being simple to make in principle by sieving stone-ground wholemeal flour) and it may not have used a hot iron, or nitric acid or limewater for Stage 2 colour development. But I do maintain with a high degree of certainty that the image was produced by a two stage imprinting/colour development that resulted in the image appearing to be intrinsic to the linen fibres themselves, whether that is or is not the case. In fact, the fibres from the latest experiment above could serve as a handy model system for investigating that very question, with a view to applying them to the Shroud itself. So far, I've avoided speculation as to what remains after the washing procedures described - whether it's still modified flour components, modified linen fibres, or a mixture of both. Researching the TS image has to be a slow and methodical trial-and-error process, given we have no clues whatsoever as to the processes that took place to produce that image. The STURP findings tell us next to nothing about the chemical make-up of the image layer. Thibault Heimburger, sad to say, is not part of the solution. He is part of the problem, being relentlessly negative and non-constructive in his never-ending stream of dismissive observations.

"Just a few days ago, an Ipsos MORI poll – if you believe any poll
since May 7 – reported that 66 per cent would vote to stay in the EU
and only 22 per cent would vote to leave."

Where on earth did
the writer get that figure? At the DT's recently updated poll (see link
to the Ipsos Mori chart) the gap has narrowed to 55% IN and 45% OUT.
What's more the two plot lines are converging!

PS The same chart is at the end of the article. Hover one's pointer over the latest portion to get the actual figures I quoted.

Further postscript (IMPORTANT!):
there's something not quite right about the DT's chart. If one moves
the pointer slightly, one finds there are TWO snapshot polls given for
June 2015, with a big difference between the two. Michael Fabricant MP
(who penned this article) has quoted the earlier of the two values,
which are those put out recently by the pollsters themselves.https://www.ipsos-mori.com/res...

Either
there's been a mistake in plotting out the IpsosMori data, OR, opinion
is shifting rapidly towards OUT, and IM knows that, explaining why there
are now two quite different results for June 2015. OK, so opinion polls
can be misleading, as shown by the GE results, but there's no need to
make them any more misleading than they already are by quoting
out-of-date results when things are in a state of rapid flux.

Further update (last on this posting): with help from my wife, yesterday's experiment has been done, but in LOTTO mode(so far at Stage 1 imprint only) I decided finally to use my hands as the "subject", having tutored my assistant in correct patting technique, use of my camera etc, in the course of which a sudden thought occurred to me which should have come sooner: the way to avoid lateral distortion in this technique is to apply paste only to those parts one wants to be imaged. That way, it doesn't matter if one's assistant is overzealous, gets pat-happy, straying round those forbidden sides! Result,assuming the result is not a total disaster, will be reported on the next posting.

Successful result - a good set of photographs. Draft title for next posting:

Man on the Turin Shroud: the mystery may finally be solved - at least in principle.

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About Me

Colin Berry, aka sciencebod, is a retired PhD researcher/teacher/academic who has worked in industry, medical schools, schools, food and biomedical research (mainly in the UK, but also in W.Africa and the United States). He's best known for his work on RESISTANT STARCH, recently described as "the trendiest form of dietary fibre".
See also his specialist Shroud of Turin blog on www.shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com
with over 200 postings to date.

Create one's own blog (age, class, gender no barrier)

It's really quite straightforward. All one has to do is to click on the photograph with that nice young man. One can then be part of the frightfully interesting Blogger community in just a couple of jiffs.

Acknowledgment

What's the latest on the LHC?

LHC gets warning system upgrade : BBC 28 September 2009

Self-organization

From wiki entry on SELF ORGANIZATION: "As a result, processes considered part of thermodynamically open systems, such as biological processes that are constantly receiving, transforming and dissipating chemical energy (and even the earth itself which is constantly receiving and dissipating solar energy), can and do exhibit properties of self organization far from thermodynamic equilibrium."

How far away should your off-licence be for a bottle of wine to be energy-neutral?

What do these two have in common?

Answer: both arrived in this world about the same time. Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4th Jan 1643 (new style*). The Taj Mahal had a 20 year gestation period, centred on approximately the same year. Click on piccy for an older post .* Or Christmas Day, 1642, depending which dating system one uses.

Is interstellar space travel feasible?

The nearest star (more correctly, star system, since it's 3 stars, a binary and a smaller satellite star) is Alpha Centauri. The average distance from Earth is 4.3 light years. Suppose technology allows us one day to achieve an interstellar cruising speed of half the speed of light. A comfortable acceleration of g (simulating Earth's gravity) would take a year, with another year to slow down comfortably. The entire journey from Earth would take a minimum of 10 years approximately. Having arrived at one's destination, it would take 4.3 years to send a radio postcard (" Hello Mum and Dad. Have arrived safely, and am now looking for a habitable planet. Am hoping it's hiding behind Proxima. Have looked everywhere else... Would die for some Cheddar cheese... ")

Watch this space

It's a cheap and cheerful form of transcendental meditation.(experimenting with settings, actually)

What causes weather?

Could you answer that question in just 7 words, ie " weather is due to...? Need some help, " Weather is due to t- - u - - - - - - h - - - - - - o - t - - E- - - -'s s - - - - - - ." The National Curriculum (England and Wales) does have its uses, but there are many more such simple principles, expressed in a minimum of words, that could be usefully incorporated.

"Had there been a Beginning (there wasn't, as it happens), there would initially have been complete Nothingness. But just as Nature abhors a vacuum, it's totally gutted at the thought of Nothingness. I mean to say - how far does Nothingness extend, assuming it has one of more dimensions? It can't extend for an infinite distance, since that would be a physical impossibility. Nothingness, to avoid having infinite reach, coils up on itself to acquire finite dimensions. In so doing, it becomes Somethingness, which has a spring-like potential energy - the total energy in fact of the Universe.

From that potential energy, present in what we now call space, or space-time, which is anything but empty, is spawned all sub-atomic particles - both matter and antimatter. When those particles collide, they mutually annihilate to create photons.

The reverse can also happen under extreme conditions - two photons can collide to create matter and anti-matter. It is potential energy in the spring-coiled Universe that is our "Dark Energy. It may or may not have mass depending on conditions.

A moment when it has no mass is the instant of the Big Bang. Let me briefly explain. An oscillating universe switches between Big Bang and Big Crunch. With the latter gravitation pulls everything into a super blackhole which then becomes a singularity - a massively dense point in space-time.

What prevents it becoming infinitely small - a physical impossibility? Answer: friction. As the sub-atomic plasma contracts and grinds, heat is generated which cannot escape - being a black hole. The temperature rises, ie particles in the plasma move faster and faster. When they reach their maximum velocity - the speed of light- all particles are suddenly transformed into photons, which as we know have no true mass(at least, no rest mass: any mass they have is purely relativistic due to their speed).

Once the entire Universe is a super-concentration of photons, all the gravitational forces in the singularity collapse to zero, or nearly so, and the entire thing blows apart - a new Big Bang, to create yet another cycle (inflation, Big Crunch, implosion etc). The Big Bang creates not just sub-atomic particles - from photon-photon collisions, but space-time itself. To reiterate: that space-time is always suffused with the stored potential energy of our curled-up dimensions (Dark Energy)."